Lecture 20: Blockstack

The podcast explores Blockstack, a decentralized architecture proposal for internet services, questioning its potential to improve upon current website structures. It examines building a naming system and public key infrastructure and assesses the non-cryptocurrency applications of blockchain technology. The discussion outlines the architecture of current centralized websites, highlighting user data control limitations and potential privacy issues, then contrasts this with Blockstack's decentralized model where application code runs on client machines and users manage their own cloud storage. The podcast further analyzes Blockstack's naming scheme, its reliance on Bitcoin's blockchain, and the challenges related to programming convenience, user privacy, and the willingness to pay for decentralized storage.